We published an editorial at the beginning of this month in Nature Physics. I wanted to repost it here and find out if anyone out there might have any feedback for us on this.

doi:10.1038/nphys841

Abstract

We want to hear from physicists what kind of tools would help in managing the ever-growing tide of information from, and the exciting possibilities of, the internet.

Introduction

At the landmark Solvay conference of 1911, a group of prominent physicists gathered to discuss the emerging ideas of the day — ideas that would eventually come to underpin the development of quantum mechanics. Just as it was then, participation at conferences is vital for the progress of science. But some things change. At the start of the last century, attending a conference was necessary to find out what was going on; now that information is at our fingertips. Whereas in 1911 communication between scientists was slow and relatively data-poor, we now live in an environment in which there is an over-abundance of information.

In the twenty-first century, often what we take away from conferences is not so much the big headline discoveries but rather the benefit of face-to-face networking with friends and peers. It’s those serendipitous conversations in the coffee breaks that we recall later. Conferences are also a sometimes welcome escape from the office and from the unending flow of e-mail. Scientific communication has changed: the internet offers instantaneous and distributed delivery of information, bringing more to our desktops than to the desks of 1911.

When such a wealth of information abounds, how best to filter it? Traditionally the peer-reviewed journal has been the principal indicator in deciding what it’s worth spending time to read, but when did you last read a journal (even this one!) from cover to cover? On the arXiv new-article page, while browsing do you keep your eye open for keywords, or individuals or groups you know, or your own supervisor’s name? How about jumping from cond-mat to hep-th, or vice versa, in case there is something interesting over on that page? And if you still have time left, which of the growing number of physics blogs should you be reading?

This growth in choice has driven each of us to develop personal search strategies. Yet a recommendation from someone you know will often have greater impact — positive or negative — on what you decide to read. This is true when the recommendation comes from someone we are close to, but does it scale? The anthropologist Robert Dunbar has proposed that 150 is the “cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships”, and this would seem to have some validity. Scientific communities are already growing to this scale, in terms of professional relationships alone. Tools to manage both the flow of information and the social relationships are needed.

Nature Publishing Group is developing such tools for scientists, to help them communicate, share and organize information relevant to their work. Moreover, recognizing that it is people who generate all of the world’s science, these will be first and foremost social applications. Among the tools already available, forums for identified individuals on Nature Network (https://network.nature.com) offer somewhere to engage in a professional discussion with your colleagues and start new forums in your area; Connotea (www.connotea.org) enables collaborative tagging and sharing of references; and Scintilla (https://scintilla.nature.com) is a tool for finding and sharing news items and blog posts. These are unabashedly Web2.0 tools — ‘Web2.0’ being one of the most pervasive memes of the past few years, referring to the development of a more data-centred concept for the internet.

Each item that is contributed to the web — be it an article, blog post, bookmark or dataset — comes with its own trail of influences, through the vectors that connect it to other content, such as citations or hyperlinks. Web publishing is, therefore, data-rich. If the tools created to interact with these data are both social and intuitive, they become a means of tracking friends and those whose advice you trust; by building in such intelligence, this new web may have as much potential for serendipity as those coffee-break conversations.

Our efforts in creating suitable tools are driven by the needs of scientists, and we want these tools to work well for physicists. So tell us what you need and how we should develop them. We have tools to track conversations, blog posts and references — what other units of communication for physicists could be aided by tools like these? Are there changes to the tools themselves that would make them more useful to you? We need to hear what you need. Tell us at e-mail: naturephysics@nature.com.

We published an editorial at the beginning of this month in Nature Physics. I wanted to repost it here and find out if anyone out there might have any feedback for us on this.

doi:10.1038/nphys841

Abstract

We want to hear from physicists what kind of tools would help in managing the ever-growing tide of information from, and the exciting possibilities of, the internet.

Introduction

At the landmark Solvay conference of 1911, a group of prominent physicists gathered to discuss the emerging ideas of the day — ideas that would eventually come to underpin the development of quantum mechanics. Just as it was then, participation at conferences is vital for the progress of science. But some things change. At the start of the last century, attending a conference was necessary to find out what was going on; now that information is at our fingertips. Whereas in 1911 communication between scientists was slow and relatively data-poor, we now live in an environment in which there is an over-abundance of information.

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